Under Lock & Key

Spoilers

A Thousand and One is a drama film set during the years of 1994-2005 in New York City. The movie follows a hairdresser and recently released prisoner Inez de la Paz (played by New Afrikan rapper/actress Teyana Taylor) who has spent the past years imprisoned in Rikers Island. A persyn who has been part of the foster home system growing up, Inez returns to her former care in Brooklyn where she sees her son, Terry (who is also in a home), out on the streets. Trying to escape from the home, Terry is hospitalized and Inez secretly visits him and takes Terry to illegally raise him as her child under a false birth certificate/social security card in Harlem.

Inez reunites with her former romantic partner/lumpen associate during her times as a petty thief named Lucky. At first, Lucky is hesitant to join in on this plan to build a new family with his former street partner, but eventually marries Inez and promises to take care of Terry. At the time, Pig Rudy Giuliani has begun his campaigns to start an improved New York City which they place much hopes for as life-long residents of NYC.

By 2001, Pig Giuliani’s attacks on the New Afrikan masses of NYC through the stop-and-frisk policies are coming down hard and we see Terry, now a teenager, being affected by this. Despite being a soft-spoken kid excelling at school, the street pigs frisk him and his friend with no other reason than being New Afrikan. Alongside Terry’s entrance into young adulthood, Inez’s marriage begins to meet difficulties as Lucky has become involved in affairs with other wimmin.

By 2005, Lucky succumbs to cancer as Terry prepares for college. The effects of gentrification are beginning to take the offensive against the masses as Euro-Amerikans begin to move in and Inez’s new landlord attempts to drive them out of the apartment using loophole methods to evict them early. In school, Terry’s guidance counselor asks for his birth certificate and social security card for a job program for underprivileged students. Without telling his mother, Terry submits his forged papers which comes back as invalid. After Terry confesses that the government documents were fake, the counselor calls social services who enter Inez’s home. Terry warns his mother about this and she begins to flee as under the imperialist law, despite caring for and stepping up to be the mother for Terry, Inez has committed a kidnapping of a ward of the state. The social services agents reveal to Terry that Inez is not his biological mother and that the two have no real blood relations. The pigs exposes Inez’s lumpen past to Terry leaving him distraught and in tears.

In the end, Inez confesses to Terry the truth. Inez was not the womyn who abandoned Terry on the street corner in his memory. She had found Terry for the first time lost in the streets when she was recently released as a prisoner from Riker’s island. Inez explains to Terry that she saw her younger self in him and that she could not stand to see another child go through the system that she was put through: the foster homes, the juvenile centers, the prisons, etc. Terry, crying, expresses the fear that he feels in becoming independent as he enters adulthood and affirms to Inez that he still loves her as a mother. The two separate on their own paths and before leaving, Inez promises Terry that “this isn’t goodbye.”

Down With Gentrification, Wimmin Hold Up Half the Sky

At the beginning of the movie, we see Inez de la Paz work as a street hawker offering hair/beauty services on the streets. We would say that this is a good portrayal of who we mean when we talk about the First World Lumpen or semi-proletariat who might not participate in overtly anti-people or parasitic ways of self-subsistence (such as sex work or drug peddling) and lives similarly to the semi-proletariat we see in the Third World. In our modern times of the 2020s, we see many folks using social media pages for these grey area side hustles while also maintaining a lower labor aristocrat level minimum wage job (oftentimes in the service industry). In the 1990s when this movie was being set, holding a cardboard box and approaching passer-bys was the common move. Readers might imagine Inez de la Paz to be in an extremely vulnerable political-economic situation as this semi-proletariat/First World Lumpen who had just been released from prison and not much support. However, the movie makes clear that Inez is a tough womyn and avoids both the traps of a damsel in distress needing a male figure out in the dangerous streets nor the over-masculinized New Afrikan womyn whose humynity is stripped away. In an artistic and political sense, we would say the movie did a great job in this regard and is an example we can look up to for creating socialist art/realistic portrayal of the masses under oppression.

Another trap that the movie avoids well is the habit of ruminating on the sensationalist/traumatic pain of New Afrikan life under U.$. imperialism. Mich art which depicts stories of the oppressed nations will fall victim to depicting a suffering masses who suffer like how the sky is blue. A Thousand and One refuses to show Inez, Terry, and Lucky as part of a faceless hoard of suffering while also refusing colorblind individualism: it intertwines the national oppression Black people face (the gentrification, the foster system, the prison system, the education system, etc.) while showing the deeply impersynal effects imperialist institutions have on these very humyn characters and how they take control over their lives without letting the system win. Because of this strong humynization of unapologetically New Afrikan characters, what might seem like a sensationalist plot twist at the end where Inez is revealed to not be Terry’s biological mother is welded to the material reality of the masses’ conditions.

The humnynization of these characters (the foster orphan, the former prisoner, the cheating husband, etc.) that this film undertakes fights against the dehumynization that already exists on these archetypes within the Amerikan imperialist-patriarchal superstructure (especially the oppressed nations and, in this case, principally New Afrika). We as Maoists believe that despite the great storytelling and care that A.V. Rockwell has put in for this story, this film is still part of the U.$. imperialist-patriarchal machine. One persyn and their creation (in this case a film director and her film) will be swept into the wave of the bourgeois superstructure. There will be many Euro-Amerikan viewers of the film who might watch this during February while it is being recommended to them by Netflix in their petty-bourgeois suburbia homes. Would they appreciate/recognize the persynal revolution that Inez has underwent throughout this story? Would they understand the self-determination that Inez has taken over her life against these social forces for the new generation to find happiness? Or would Inez’s motivations and reasons become watered down to a story of the strong independent Black womyn whose intentions were good but her methods of trying to find happiness for Terry was just wrong and too radical? Or worse, they might just paint her as a criminal con artist whose vicarious happiness to a boy she never met gave her a chance to play the act of a mother and a stable family the system eventually took away from her as well. Ms. Rockwell has put great effort into the humynization of these characters, we are afraid that a film alone is not enough to change the consciousness of most people in the level necessity for a society without oppression. That would be a job for a cultural revolution under a proletarian dictatorship.

One thing that interested me as a Maoist revolutionary is the role of motherhood that Inez was able to master over Terry despite her having the knowledge that Terry was not her biological son: a fact that is so overemphasized and shoved down the masses throats when it comes to their legitimate claim over a child. Biological determinism (like in “race”) is a core principle of the imperialist-patriarchial superstructure: gender, motherhood, etc. is determined by one’s bloodline or something they are “born with.” The reality however, is that conditioning of individual by an entire society’s relations of production and class struggle is the true driving force for these roles. For Inez de la Paz, an individual New Afrikan womyn who has recently been released from Rikers Island, to use what she has learned as her life as a lumpen to fight against this broad society’s conditioning and condition herself using individual determination is a great depiction of the social potential of the lumpen class. Historically, abandoning the bourgeois quest of giving orphaned children a nuclear family for them to go into and instead giving them a new environment to live on as orphans has been the successful practice of solving the problem of orphan street kids in the Soviet Union. While a Maoist telling of this story would perhaps depict independent institution building for people like Terry and Inez, the story that is told instead serves good medium for studying and appropriating bourgeois individualism of the Amerikans for the interests of the oppressed nations.

I would like to conclude the review of this movie with two quotes:

“The world is yours, as well as ours, but in the last analysis, it is yours. You young people, full of vigor and vitality, are in the bloom of life, like the sun at eight or nine in the morning. Our hope is placed on you. The world belongs to you. China’s future belongs to you.” - Mao Zedong

“Our revenge will be the laughter of our children” - Bobby Sands

The complex issue of dealing with homelessness here in the imperialist center has led to much debate within our party. In our current stage, we are engaged in consciousness building and raising public opinion, while it is our proletarian morality which compels us to struggle against oppression in all arenas. Homelessness is a crisis more serious than fentanyl and yet the capitalist state via its “supreme kourt” has recently determined that codifying homeless “sweeps” of encampments and criminalizing the homeless for being displaced is their remedy for the economic depression that capitalism creates. Surely communists can think of a far more humynizing solution.

At the same time, our responsibility here in the First World is not to follow the capitalist state around with a rag to wipe up its spills and a dust pan and broom to pick up its litter. We are not brainstorming to create reforms that simply make life in the occupied territories more bearable. We must fight oppression while serving the revolution.

Homeless Have National Oppression to Blame

The capitalist system is ultimately behind all social ills, and it was capitalism that first created a “surplus population”, which includes much of the homeless. However, looking particularly at recent rises in homelessness in the so-called United $tates, we can see how national oppression played a significant role in who became homeless.

During the 1960s and 70s, as the national liberation struggles peaked in the United $nakes, the movement suffered extreme repression from the U.$. government. Death and prison helped Amerika scale down the rise in resistance among the lumpen. As the 1980s arrived, so too did the introduction of crack cocaine to the ghetto streets – and soon followed mass incarceration. It’s important to note that during the 1960s and 70s there was not a homeless epidemic and there were no massive homeless encampments in every large city as is currently seen now. While statistics are not good, it’s possible that homelessness in the mid 1980s had reached rates that were double what they are today.(1)

Mass incarceration served the state in preventing another wave of revolutionary resistance. “Tough on crime” laws were enacted to curtail any efforts from the movement in the U.$. to regroup and reorganize the lumpen. As a result, the 1980s and 90s saw a mass capture of non-whites not seen on that level since the time of the middle passage. This mass incarceration – or mass kidnapping, to be more precise – led to the disruption and dissolution of the family unit while simultaneously injecting drugs on the scene. This mass kidnapping then led to mass displacement as single parents struggled to stay afloat often succumbing to escapism and criminalization themselves, only to be released to homelessness. Though the massive prison boom did allow for a shift of a significant portion of the lumpen from the streets to cages.

And while it is unclear how today’s rates compare to the 1980s, we are currently seeing a record in homelessness since the HUD started a more systematic count in 2007. And this has disproportionately hit oppressed nations again:

“This year’s big jump was driven by people who lost housing for the first time, which Biden administration officials say reflects the sharp rise in rent. The largest increase was among families, and the count also finds a significant rise among Hispanics. Nearly 40% of the unhoused are Black or African-American [who are only 12% of the general population -editor], and a quarter are seniors. The annual count does not include the many people who couch surf with friends or family, and who may be at high risk of ending up on the street.”(2)

We Don’t Want Peace with Amerikkka

Homelessness affects all of society in one way or another. Financially, it costs over 2 billion per year for former prisoners who are homeless.(3) If we look at it holistically, homelessness affects everything from mortality rates, healthcare, education, marriages, parenting, divorce, child welfare, the environment, etc. It’s unknown how this will affect future generations. What is known is that many of those in the homeless encampments, like most of those in the prison kamps, are Brown or Black. This all translates to economic oppression that the oppressed nations face with mass imprisonment, gentrification of their historic neighborhoods and of course being squeezed into homelessness. For those who support the empire, crumbs are flung their way, but for the lumpen who have no interest or intention to contribute to the U.$. capitalist system, an I.V. drip of violence, displacement, threat and trauma is fed to this population. When the United $tates describes “peace” for Aztlán, it is describing Chican@ capitulation to Amerikkka. To this, we decline, as we don’t want peace with Amerikkka, we want to be free. Our efforts to heighten the contradictions to step closer towards our goal of revolution and independence is what should guide us as we move toward our national interests.

The Nature of the Homeless

Marxism taught us that the natural laws can be harnessed in the interests of the masses. Under capitalism, there is a whole sector – the lumpen-proletariat, or the First World lumpen in the non-proletarian countries – who are systematically locked out of the production process and whose very lives are sacrificed in the name of profit and seen as castaways of society. The First World lumpen make up the vast majority of the homeless here in these false U.$. borders. Capitalist ideology here in the U.$. has been shaped by a long chain of oppression that has squeezed the colonized internal nations into our current state. White supremacy and slavery helped forge capitalist theory and practice and helped accelerate class development even surpassing Europe in many ways. Indeed, even James Bryce in “The American Commonwealth” documented the early stages of the U.$. petit bourgeois nature of the 1800s when he made several trips to the U.$. and wrote:

“In Connecticut and Massachusetts the operatives in many a manufacturing town lead a life far easier, far more brightened by intellectual culture and by amusements than that of the clerks and shopkeepers of England or France.”(4)

By the late 1800s, Amerikkka became increasingly bourgeoisified in many areas. By the early 1900s, U.$. imperialism would begin to exploit abroad, bringing the blood money back to these false U.$. borders and distributing it to buy off sectors of workers as investments to its future survival. But capitalism can never provide full employment and this means the alienated masses turn to the underground economy to survive. For many ex-prisoners, the underground economy is the only way they can survive. And for the homeless – which consists in large part on Injustice-impacted people – the underground economy is, for some, the only game in town.

When we examine the homeless population in the United $tates, we find that it is made up of many ex-prisoners(5). The internal semi-colonies are the majority percentage-wise.(6) This highlights the class contradictions within the United $tates as well. The state has imported European immigrants in their scramble to counter their social reality. The 2022 U.$. Census data shows that the white population in the U.$. would have decreased had it not been for 391,000 white people immigrating to the U.$. from Europe.(7) This approach to maintaining demographics favorable to the oppressor nation is nothing new, of course. Sakai points out how in the decades following the Haitian Revolution of 1791, it became “increasingly obvious that a ‘thin, white line’ of a few soldiers, administrators and planters could not safely hold down whole oppressed nations” which was the political impetus behind several waves of immigration from Europe in the 19th century.(8)

We can even trace the interconnection and evolution of homelessness and criminalization in the United $tates from pop culture to the prison gates. In the 1950s, Hollywood movies depicted the classic train riding “hobo” while prisons were filled with chain smoking conmen. Both populations were whiter than meemaw’s tuna casserole. Today, both populations are mostly Brown and Black, and yet the revolutionary movement here within the occupied territories have yet to bring us closer to finding a remedy with teeth. Only a remedy that helps the oppressed nations while undermining Amerika will be sufficient in this scenario. While searching for the consideration of homelessness in the occupied territories let us not lose focus of how national oppression ties into the equation, despite Amerika flinging crumbs to a myriad of agencies, case managers, construction companies, advocacy groups and so-called social services.

On the surface it appears as if the capitalists are using the profits they accumulate through exploitation to help soothe the very social ills that they create. Nothing can be further from the truth, as the Maoist Internationalist Movement’s Prison Ministry put it:

“Under capitalism, the anarchy of production is the general rule. This is because capitalists only concern themselves with profit, while production and consumption of humyn needs is at the whim of the economic laws of capitalism. As a result, people starve, wars are fought and the environment is degraded in ways that make humyn life more difficult or even impossible. Another result is that whole groups of people are excluded from the production system, whereas in pre-class societies, a group of humyns could produce the basic food and shelter that they needed to survive. Capitalism is unique in keeping large groups of people from doing so.”(9)

Indeed, the capitalists lock entire sectors out of the production process and create social band-aids that do not eradicate this mess. Imperialism creates a network of petty bourgeois jobs for Amerikans that feed off this population that we call the lumpen but which most know as the “Homeless”. The capitalists have devised a way to make the lumpen useful for keeping others busy and paid, while preventing the lumpen themselves from being productive for their own humynity.

The Prison Parallel

As mentioned above, another place we find concentrations of lumpen are the prisons, where they are treated similarly. A recent example of this is in California where the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health (known as CAL/OSHA) recently attempted to address climate change and adapting to a rising heat epidemic. The State of California recently created heat standards for California workers. This would include more breaks and cooling and ventilation in all state buildings that respond to climate change. CAL/OSHA excluded California prisons and jails from the new regulations.(10)

The jails and prisons are lumpen centers where prisoners are often subjected to subhuman conditions, torture, medical maltreatment in HELLth care, not to mention outright murder by the state. The heat is also used against those prisoners who challenge the state in general and revolutionary prisoners in particular. Indeed, our Party has heard first hand accounts from some of our members who have been held in the U.$. concentration kamps (prisons). Our Chairman himself was held and tortured for a decade in the state’s Security Housing Units (S.H.U.) in solitary confinement, so our understanding of the conditions of prisoners is in depth. Some of the accounts we heard were that in the most humid prisons where temperatures in the summer rise to 110°F (43°C) the prison officials will turn on the heaters in the cells, while in the coldest prisons, even where it snows, the prison officials will crank up the air conditioning to make the cells like “ice boxes”. One comrade described how at a particular prison they were at, it was so hot in the cell that this comrade would pour water on the cement floor and lay on the floor only in underwear as it was extremely unbearable. Another comrade described that it was so hot at one Central Valley prison that it felt as if eir “insides were cooking”.

Science tells us that excessive heat also increases risk of stroke and other health problems. Those with pre-existing conditions or failing health will have their conditions exacerbated in extreme heat. The excuse cited for excluding prisoners from these new climate related protections was cost. It’s too expensive to humynize the lumpen. This points to another example of the lumpen simply being useful at this time to be given the bare minimum to exist another day in dehumynized conditions.

The lumpen are in a precarious position to say the least, here in the United Snakes and in any society for that matter. First World lumpen can have a hand in emancipating humynity here in the imperialist center or end up succumbing to its demise like the old couple who had been married half a century and when one dies the other spouse quickly follows. The lumpen plays a vital role where it can be bought off as foot soldiers for capitalism in its fascist development or as the lumpen developed in Maoist China as some of the fiercest fighters for the revolution in the form of the Red Guards.(11)

Marx hinted at this when he said:

“But capital not only lives upon labor. Like a master, at once distinguished and barbarous, it drags with it into its grave the corpses of its slaves, whole hecatombs of workers, who perish in the crises.”(12)

Today, in the First World, most “workers” are in the labor aristocracy and not the slaves of capital that Marx describes here. The lumpen, however, can be seen as “runaway slaves”, those who in many ways have cast off the tethers of capitalist society.

It is important that we understand that social control determines the mass influx of planation-like facilities which prisoners in the U.$. are compelled to endure as well as the lumpenization that comes with it. The future of the Chican@ Nation relies on us grasping this and responding in a way that advances Aztlán closer to independence.

Concrete Analysis of a Concrete Situation

The lumpen who mostly comprise the “homeless” within the U.$. are a resourceful bunch who organize in unprecedented ways within these false U.$. borders. In our party’s study, we have interviewed dozens of homeless people living in various modes of existence. Some homeless exist as couch surfers living persyn to persyn, some live in cars or RVs, some in cardboard boxes on sidewalks across the U.$., some live in mental facilities, jails or prisons and yet some live in abandoned buildings, parks, creeks and in homeless camps. About 62% of homeless in the general population are “sheltered”, while only 50% of former prisoners in the homeless population are “sheltered.”(13)

The encampments are of special concern, as they are the most organized of the homeless population. In the State of California, recent numbers show the homeless population at 181,000.(14) These are the numbers that could be documented, so we suspect the actual count to be much higher, probably in the range of 200,000, as there are many who live in the shadows and for many different reasons refuse to be counted by the state. It should also be noted that it was in San Jose, California some years back where some have called the largest homeless camp in the U.$. was found. This camp even had a name that the lumpen gave it – “The Jungle” and this encampment had up to 10,000 people living there, 10,000 lumpen, mostly Chican@s who existed for over a decade as a camp.

It is also interesting that the State of California which is not just a state within Aztlán but currently includes the heart of what the capitalists call “silicon valley” also has huge swaths of homeless people. So much wealth and privilege exists alongside such misery, poverty and hunger in this place where people’s lives are reduced to nada if those lives do not build capitalism. This reminds us what we are fighting.

The homeless camps are comprised of lumpen of all ages, including babies and the elderly. There are teens who have lived much of their lives in the camps. Many children are illiterate and relocating from camp to camp or from camp to “flying homeless” (i.e., living on sidewalks or in cars).

The larger and more established camps have a main organizer who acts as a warlord of sorts. These larger camps tend to be organized more on the model of U.$. youth survival groups, which the capitalists call “gangs” rather than lumpen organizations. These main camps have rules and penalties that go with them. The high crimes in these camps are crimes against children, for which the penalty can be a beating and banishment or even death depending on the severity of the crime.

The shot-callers within the main camps have hystorically been male, although the shot-callers tend to be more permanent while the rest of the community tends to be more fluid, with many relocating regularly or ending up in jail. In our study, all of the shot-callers have been imprisoned in some form, whether that be in county jail or prison.

Those who comprise these main camps “surface” to the streets sporadically for food, showers or to tap into the underground economy by any means necessary. Camp life tends to revolve around food, water and drugs. “Communal” living in the main camps is often injected with drugs. Drug use is rampant in the camps, although not all homeless in the camps are users. Some are sellers who slang dope in the camps making thousands in profits off their fellow lumpen’s misery and addiction. The prime drugs of choice in the camps being meth, heroin and crack. The dealers on the streets ensure that the main camps stay flooded with dope.

Most of the main camps are located in creeks, industrial areas, or under freeway bridges and underpasses. Many of the camps have electricity from stolen generators and power lines. Contrary to what people believe, many of the homeless do not bathe in the creeks even when their camps are in the creek. Many use camping showers or seek showers at community centers or at the homes of friends and family.

The factors contributing to the epidemic known as homelessness have been formulated elsewhere, we know that the heart of the problem remains to be capitalism. We understand that factors like hunger afflict the homeless population and throwing the homeless something to chew on has continued to be done by both liberals and religious conservatives alike and to no avail. As communists, we need to take action that translates to radically different terms and which is more impactful and deep reaching.

Identifying and heightening the contradictions here in the occupied territories of Aztlán while aiding the Brown masses and pushing the national liberation struggle forward on these shores is a key tenet of our party. Homelessness is one of the major fractures within the empire in which the development of resistance is likely, the other being the U.$. prison system. It is our duty to nurture these factors. In order to properly carry out our duties, we need to understand how the lumpen are currently responding to these capitalist assaults on their humynity.

Cultural Revolution

“Due to the precarious stratification of the lumpen, and the imperialists’ refusal to let us fully integrate into Amerika, our allegiance to the imperialists is more tenuous. As the lumpen experience oppression first hand here in Amerika, we are in a position to spearhead the revolutionary vehicle within U.$. borders” (15)

Social practice is the remedy which will deliver the Chican@ masses to national liberation. A heightened consciousness nurtured by and forged in the fires of political theory is the vehicle that we have awaited since colonization. As we struggle to rebuild the resistance that we need, the capitalist bribes sway our people to the tempo of their blood stained rhythm, and we listen to Lenin and dig deeper within the people to find those elements that continue to have nothing to lose but their chains. Here in the First World, those elements are the lumpen.

During the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (GPCR), which took place from 1966 - 1976 in revolutionary China, revolutionary intellectuals were sent from the cities to the countryside to take revolutionary culture to the peasants and politicize them, learn from them, to engage them so that they can take their rightful place in contributing to the revolution. To many at the time, the thought of venturing out to the countryside was not inviting. To those truly seeking to contribute to the revolution, the sacrifice of having no running water or indoor plumbing was miniscule. This practice of sending urban intellectuals and professionals to do practical work in the countryside was also done in the Soviet Union from the very earliest days of revolutionary power.

Here in the First World, the lumpen (which includes the homeless population) are a potential revolutionary force that must be tapped. Marx taught us that capitalism prevents us from solving the social ills like homelessness and that only through socialist revolution will we realize this truth. Mao’s China solved many social ills amongst the lumpen including drug addition and prostitution, both of which are activities found amongst the lumpen (homeless) throughout the U.$. and as we begin this work of politicizing the homeless, or of bringing revolutionary culture to them, we are in essence preparing the lumpen for the revolution.

We believe that it is not a question if we should go to the homeless camps to bring revolutionary culture to the lumpen, we believe that it must be done. Our party has begun this task. Lenin describes our task ahead:

“We can (and must) begin to build socialism, not with abstract human material, or with human material specially prepared by us, but with the human material bequeathed to us by capitalism. True, it is not an easy matter, but no other approach to this task is serious enough to warrant discussion.”(16)

Although we are not “building socialism” now, we are building the conditions for revolution which will advance us toward socialism. We must take action, social practice amongst the homeless – on their turf. Cheerleading for the homeless in front of City Hall or sliding them a burrito is cute and subjectively fulfilling to an extent, but it moves the lumpen not one iota towards resistance or revolution. Comrades, we must do more than the churches and more than a liberal non-profit. As communists, our role is not to make the lumpen more comfortable under capitalism, rather we must prepare the lumpen for insurrection.

It is important that we work towards transforming the homeless camps into political bases, safe zones with Chican@ cadre in every camp throughout Aztlán. But we should also take our endeavors in this field seriously, as the state has captured or killed Chican@ revolutionaries for lesser ambitions. Amerikkka is deadly serious in its repression, we should be just as serious in our evasion and resistance and utilize a strong security culture as we move through the camps. There is much potential in the lumpen encampments and the enemy knows this.

Marx taught us that the lumpen were indeed the “dangerous class”. We agree that there is a certain danger in interacting with the lumpen, just as there is a certain danger of interacting with the capitalist state, not to mention the white settler nation in general. History has taught us that to be colonized is dangerous as well, so we have learned to struggle through generational danger and in many cases to do so armed and ready to resist.

At this stage, we only seek to bring revolutionary culture to the lumpen encampments as we see it as complimenting our efforts to raise public opinion. At the same time, we stand firm that ultimately it will be through armed struggle that Aztlán will be free and the lumpen will play a key role in the national liberation struggle here in the internal semi-colonies. Here we agree with Fanon when describing the lumpen, he said:

“…that horde of starving men, uprooted from their tribe and from their clan, constitutes one of the most spontaneous and most radically revolutionary forces of a colonized people.”(17)

As Fanon suggests, the lumpen moves differently. It is not a class which succeeds at town hall debates or boycotts. Hit the lumpen up when it’s time to boogie, when violence explodes in the metropole and the capitalist state feels the slugs of liberation, for this is the arena in which the lumpen excels. Forged through oppression, the lumpen will perform on the stage built by the bourgeoisie and their collaborators. But the party must perform as well and the movement more broadly must perform. We must perform agitation and propaganda (agit/prop) and do so well amongst the lumpen.

In “Combat Liberalism”, Mao discussed how liberalism prevents people from acting on living up to their obligations as communists. Among other things, he points to failing to show concern for the masses and not engaging in agit/prop. There are many reasons why people practice liberalism. In many ways, some have fallen into liberalism here in the occupied territories. Many within the movement have opted out of reaching back into the lumpen encampments to those alienated not only from labor but from society as well. In this sense, the party seeks to combat liberalism in this field.

Some have wondered what is to be done with the lumpen encampments, “what is possible?” some ask. There is much work to be done. We need our presence felt, we need to become a regular presence in the camps and begin to inject them with revolutionary culture – with art, literature and teatro. We need to gain their confidence and to teach and learn – from the masses, to the masses.

The Chican@ movement of the past never dealt with the homeless in this way, although the homeless epidemic was not in existence to today’s levels we must be honest that scant attention was given to the homeless in general. Today’s Chican@ movement must do more as the next generation must in turn do more than us and continue to build.

The lumpen encampments are self-governed as the pigs or other state agencies rarely ever go into the camps. We see that there is potential in these zones, especially with their concentrated amount of lumpen. We believe that by focusing our energy on this demographic, it will complete our overall strategy of winning this struggle for national liberation. There is much work to do in these camps, but political education is essential and a stepping stone to developing dual power in these zones.

Let us be clear that any weakening of resolve about the task ahead only helps Amerikkka and hurts the struggle for national liberation. At the same time, our efforts are not to set up re-entry services for the homeless lumpen, on the contrary, our efforts are to set up and recruit the lumpen to serve the people. We are not seeking reforms, nor do we believe in them, rather we agree with the BLA that

“reform of the oppressive system can never benefit its victims: in the final analysis, the system of oppression was created to insure the rule of particular racist classes and sanctify their capital. To seek reform therefore inevitably leads to, or begins with, the recognition of the laws of our oppressor as being valid.”(18)

Reform is only tactical in getting the boot off our neck long enough for us to breathe to fight and resist the oppressor nation another day. Likewise, the oppressors laws and kkkourts mean nothing to us, as they are illegitimate to the core, we only navigate them in order to plot the demise of Amerika.

The lumpen encampments, like the prisons, are fertile grounds for resistance. In the First World, we are forced to dig deeper into the social forces to find those who are not bribed by the profits stolen from the Third World pockets. Our efforts today are for the Third World.

^{Notes:
(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_in_the_United_States - gives a homeless rate of 0.09% in 1990, but mentions this was probably an undercount; it gives 200-500 thousand as the homeless count in 1984, which doubled by 1987 - at the high end this would put homeless rates at 0.22% and 0.42% respectively; the 2023 rate was 0.19% the highest rate since HUD began gathering data more accurately in 2007
(2)Jennifer Ludden, 15 December 2023, Homelessness in the U.S. hit a record high last year as pandemic aid ran out, All Things Considered.
(3) “The Economic Burden of Incarceration in the U.S.”, from the Institute for Advancing Justice Research and Innovation”, October 2016, George Warren Brown School of Social Work.
(4) “The American Commonwealth”, by James Bryce (1888-1959, Vol II, pp.557-58).
(5)According Prison Policy Initiative analysis of HUD data, formerly incarcerated have 2% homelessness rate compared to 0.21% of the overall population. A Harvard Business review article says there are about 5 million formerly incarcerated in U.$.; 2% of 5 million is 100,000; .21% of 350 million is 735,000. Based on these estimates, formerly incarcerated are less than 15% of homeless in U.$. streets.
(6) about 61% of homeless are oppressed nations according to stats in “Defining and Measuring the Lumpen Class in the United States: A Preliminary Analysis”, by MIM(Prisons), July 2016.
(7) U.S. Census Bureau.
(8) “Settlers”, by J. Sakai (2014, pg. 52).
(9) “Defining and Measuring the Lumpen Class in the United States: A Preliminary Analysis”, by MIM(Prisons), July 2016.
(10) “Prisons are a Cruel Exception to Heat Rules”, by Nicholas Shapiro and Bharat Jayram Venkat, the Mercury News, July 14, 2024.
(11)Wiawimawo, October 2018, Sakai’s Investigation of the Lumpen in Revolution, ULK Issue 64.
(12) “Wage, Labor and Capital”, by Karl Marx.
(13)Lucius Couloute, August 2018, Nowhere to Go: Homelessness among formerly incarcerated people, Prison Policy Initiative.
(14) “Newsom Orders Sweeps of Camps”, by Ethan Varian, The Mercury News, July 26, 2024.
(15) “Chican@ Power and the Struggle for Aztlán”, by a MIM(Prisons) Study Group, 2015, 2021, pg. 14.
(16) V.I. Lenin, “Left-wing communism – an Infantile Disorder”, Collected Works, Vol. 31, pg. 50.
(17) “The Wretched of the Earth”, by Frantz Fanon.
(18) “Collected Works of the Black Liberation Army”, pg. 111.}

i wanted to take this opportunity to lend my voice to this ongoing discussion around so-called “snitching”, as this is a serious topic of principle and ideology which affects Our ability to succeed in Our tactical and strategic approaches.

As MIM(Prisons) pointed out, this question was originally raised due to captives organizing around police terrorism inside prisons and other captives refusal to participate in the paper trail aspect of the resistance. However, the issue raised in ULK 83’s article putting forth the slogan “Stop Collaborating” and the response in ULK 86, “Stop Snitching on Pigs”, need to be discussed as they all derive from the same source and it needs to be spelled out.

The California Prisoner in ULK 86 opens by saying “Let’s look at this from a practical perspective and not from an ideological one.” Then says “Snitching is telling on people. It’s giving information on someone else to a higher authority to act on it. We can all agree on that definition.”

i begin by stating: NO! We cannot all agree on that. It is a fallacy that telling on someone and snitching is always the same. See, snitching necessitates that We’ve had some sort of prior bond, or understanding. If your co-defendant “snitches on you” it is different from the old church lady down the street “telling on you.” It may produce the same result, but these are two different things. And it is indeed an ideological question, We can’t get around that. The co-defendant has an understanding with you, usually an unspoken one that each of you are equally committed to the morals and principles of the criminal subculture, which means no cooperation with law enforcement even if it means saving your own skin. When the co-defendant goes against that they have snitched on you, not only because they told but because they violated your trust by going against a principle each of you swore to uphold. The presence of the betrayal factor and the deceit, the inability to honor a commitment, these are the key factors that represent the phenomenon We call snitching. These are indeed universal principles that virtually no one likes when people go against. Regardless of walk of life, We as humyns want to have assurance that commitments will be honored, that sacrifices will be made, and that trustworthiness will be present in those We associate with. It is for this reason real snitching is universally frowned upon.

However, when We bring the old church lady into the equation, she, while frowning upon the Judas in her bible and those who exhibit those same traits in her world, will tell on you for whatever perceived slight or transgression you’ve committed against her. She hasn’t swore to any principles of the criminal subculture, she has no bond with you other than being a community member, and that bond was broken by you in your antisocial act against her. So she cannot possibly “snitch” on you, even while proceeding to tell on you. There is a significant difference, and We cannot hold people to standards that they have never acknowledged.

As MIM(Prisons) said, abuses must be exposed by so-called authorities and this goes towards undermining the legitimacy of their authority.

A crooked cop is not an ally to a revolutionary prisoner simply because they are crooked or they bring something in. This question has to really be worked out on a case-by-case basis, but i’ll just say that in most cases the crooked cop isn’t an ally and the situation is just transactional, there’s no understanding either way of the intentions behind either the taking or bringing of illicit things: it’s only a transactional relationship like most in a capitalist society. So, to say the pig (the profit-driven crooked cop) is my ally because they bring me phones and dope is to say that i am allowing myself to be bought off by these items. As a NARN i stand on the principles put forth in the FROLINAN Handbook for REVNAT Cadres: Standards 5: “Potential members must have outgrown the lust for coveting things or material goods.” And from the Codes of Conduct 4: “No member of the revolutionary cadre organization will place any material commodity above or before the organization, the people, or the NAIM.” 6: “No member of the revolutionary cadre organization is permitted to use, produce, distribute, process, fund, or take part in the sale of heroin, cocaine (in any form), LSD, PCP, or any hard drug, nor will they take any pill for the purpose of getting high and no member will distribute such pills or take part in the sale of such pills or other illegal drugs.”

i share to illustrate the standards and codes of conduct We should be upholding, even when no one else is, or even when it benefits Us to do otherwise. So if We follow this as spelled out it would limit Our dealings with that crooked pig anyway. We have a mandate to liberate political prisoners and if they believe in the principles of the revolutionary movement, then maybe that rare individual is an ally. But We all know there aren’t many who are willing to put their life and freedom on the line to liberate Us, even if they’re willing to help Us saturate the pen with distractions. So this says “i am willing, as a crooked pig who is profit driven, to help you distract yourself and others while in prison, but i am not willing to help you get out of prison.” i don’t think that’s a real ally and it’s because of the profit motive itself.

This brings me to my next point. The California Prisoner uses the terminology that We all use. “Our struggle.” But i think We need to define exactly what “Our struggle” means to us, because it doesn’t mean the same thing to everyone at all times. Some think the struggle is for power and influence within the prison, some think it’s to tear down all prisons right now, some think it’s to reform the criminal mentality in order to produce good law abiding citizens of the corporate states of amerika and all these and other trends coexist to make up what Our struggle objectively is, but what is Our struggle subjectively, to Us? The Dragon pointed this out the best when it was said, that the whole point of the prison movement, the underlying motive for all the actions is to develop the capacity to field a People’s Army. i am paraphrasing. So in my experience, and something i lament to cats around although i can’t speak for cats here or elsewhere, but those who have “plugs” are not using them for any sort of dissent activities. Those who have plugs and dope are usually those policing the cats doing the dissident actions, whether those actions are paper trial related or organizing direct action.

Rarely is it the cats who have plugs and dope doing anything for the movement, and even when these are comrades with knowledge and experience and proven track records of struggle, while they have access to those plugs and dope their activism and commitment to it either ceases or severely lessens. Why? Because these are not only distractions but are corrupting influences. It is no coincidence that usually the prisons with the least amount of “motion” are those with the highest level of rebel activity and ideological training going on. So although plugs could theoretically be used for a lot of good they are by and large not being used in that way. [MIM(Prisons) adds: This is our experience as well.]

So, while I would agree with the Cali Prisoner about not throwing the baby out with the bath water, i do so largely because We cannot do so anyway. The prison system creates its black market economy through its laws of prohibition. Therefore there will always be some pig somewhere itching to take advantage of the unique economic opportunity to provide distractions and corrupting influences to those that want them and want to provide them. i am not advocating telling on crooked cops, but let me be clear they’re not allies to revolutionary prisoners, unless they themselves support the revolutionary principles We uphold. Let me also be clear that those who decide to tell on these crooked cops, here meaning specifically those who are driven by profit, those acts are not snitching, even though they are telling as explained at the top of this writing.

The two main things that hold the revolutionary prison movement back are gangs/gang mentalities and the drug trade. Therefore, anyone who perpetuates the latter is holding back the movement. On the gang question, there are those who are solid revs and come from this cloth, i am one of them. However, this doesn’t change the fact that the introduction of and expansion of gangs, particularly street gangs inside prison, at least in the case of Texas, coincides with the downward slope of revolutionary consciousness and commitment within the walls.

Gone are the days where L.O.’s are built upon revolutionary and progressive principles. Gone are the days of traditional groups spreading knowledge and going at the system. They’re only spreading dope, gangsterism, and discord amongst each other. The exceptions to this rule become obsolete within their groups, and the revolutionary prisoners who really stand on revolutionary bizzness are not the cool cats with all the luxuries, they’re usually the ones outcast, not liked, shunned, isolated, because everyone wants to be crime bosses in here. In order to bring the proper orientation and programs back to the prisons, revolutionary and progressive prisoners have to make allies and build up institutions to help those who need and want it. It won’t be too many who want it, and that’s just the sad and true reality we’re in these days. Capitalism + dope = genocide.

These MF’ers are preventing us from building the People’s Army and We are talking about protecting them and their interests and that they are allies? Come on homie, what wrong with that picture!?

In the history of the prison movement the most effective tactic of changing conditions has been inmate litigation. In order to litigate you must create a paper trail. How can we do that if we are not filing any complaints? i encourage comrades, those who live by revolutionary codes of conduct to be mindful of exactly how you implore the enemy institutions. Not because it is or isn’t snitching, but because, again, Our point is to build a People’s Army and We still have to do that even though We complain about the reactionary notions a lot of Our peers have, these are still the peers We have to organize with and among, and therefore like any shrewd politician We must be mindful of the landscape and the dominant ideologies and ideals, even those we disagree with, and navigate the terrain in a way that doesn’t neutralize Our effectiveness at organizing people under Our umbrella. We won’t be able to build the army if they all distrust Us because they think we are snitches. We won’t even have the time or space to argue otherwise because credibility has been lost.

For this reason, it is not politically correct to tell internal affairs on the crooked pig about profit driven acts, whereas documenting acts of pig brutality where people can see and understand the negative intentions behind the pig’s actions and therefore are less likely to side with the pig against you either directly or ideologically, that is an action that is politically correct. Be mindful comrades, and stay focused on the ultimate objective. Don’t snitch, and i mean really snitch (betray you honor and commitments) and don’t collaborate with the state.

Introduction: Current Existing Ideas Around Snitching

As Marxist-Leninist-Maoists it is important to apply the dialectical materialist method when it comes to handling the contradictions among the masses. In the prison context where most of our organizing revolves around, the contradictions between various prisoner individuals, national groups, and lumpen organizations can become antagonistic and it is our job to transform this antagonistic contradiction into a non-antagonistic one and resolve it from there out.

One example of idealism is around the “stop snitching” slogan and campaign. Is “stop snitching” a correct slogan? Only an idealist could answer this question without more information. The materialist method of finding out what would constitute “snitching” would be to analyze the material conditions of how this “stop snitching” idea came about, the purposes it was for, which classes were promoting it, and going from there. What we must not do is treat it like a general platitude where it can be abused for anti-people purposes and exploited by the pigs to get the masses to fight amongst themselves.

To assume the most righteous origins of the “stop snitching” slogan, we can think of various lumpen organizations, who might be in competition and rivalry with each other at times. Yet these organizations all come to agree that they have a common interest in not sending the oppressor’s cops against each other. Perhaps there is a consciousness as oppressed people uniting these L.O.s to come to this conclusion. But certainly there is a material interest in staying alive and out of prison by reducing the amount of police involvement in their lives.

The “stop snitching” campaign was a success. So much so that today, in many prisons, it has been taken up as an idealistic and dogmatic truth rather than a materialist principle to apply in differing conditions. To many this slogan is true for all times and all places. In fact, it is so absolutely true that they apply it to the police themselves! We’ve received reports from many parts of the country that comrades can’t get others to file grievances against abuse and inhumane conditions against the system because fellow prisoners don’t want to “snitch”.

Now in reality, those fellow prisoners are probably just scared of what prison staff will do to them, so they use the “stop snitching” slogan as an excuse to do nothing and live quietly under the boot of oppression which the stop snitching principle was brought up to fight against in the first place.

However, those who stand up for themselves recognize the role of grievances. We live in a bourgeois democracy. The image of the rule of law is important to the enemy even if things become lawless in the corners of society, like in prisons. There is a grievance system and the bourgeois/imperialist state says they will follow that system. That means this is a tool that can and should be used to improve conditions for comrades organizing within the belly of the beast and fight for the political rights to build independent institutions. To call that snitching is to say that something is true because it’s true; not because of any actual evidence or material basis. To call this snitching is to lack any analysis of class, nation, gender or who are our friends and who are our enemies.

And as we discussed in the last issue of ULK, we must learn to think in percentages to build the United Front for Peace in Prisons. Thinking in absolutes, allows the enemy to keep us divided.

Case Scenario: Inmate Collaborators and Pigs Using Anti-Snitching Sentiment to Repress Prisoners in CDCR

In one of many reports like this, a comrade in California recently wrote us:

Dear MIM Distributors,

I am a disabled person under the Armstrong v. Newsom injunction where I continue to be targeted by officers who specialize in pitting prisoners against each other to discourage and deter use of the grievance process at Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility (RJD), and in retaliation for the same.

On the morning of 25 August 2023, while exiting my cell quarters to be issued my breakfast and lunch Kosher meal, one of the inmate porter workers (infamous for not only disruptions, violence, and fighting other prisoners on the unit; but also carrying out retaliatory terrorism for officers against prisoners who use the RJD grievance process to report misconduct) began to ridicule me without provocation.

Subsequent to returning to my cell and at commencement of A.M. medication, officer G. Sellano supervised pill line near my cell as the same prisoner porter worker came to my cell door and began hostile provocation calling me a “snitch” for pending grievances (Attached as Exhibit A). Both of which involve this very same inmate porter worker and officer G. Sellano.

This inmate porter worker then stood outside my cell door on a rant to provoke me by yelling “snitch, you a bitch, you wrote a buz on me and Sellano.” The whole time officer G. Sellano stood listening, watching as the inmate porter worker then openly blasted how he is able to “do what I want all around here, I can fight anybody I want and nothing will happen. I won’t even get a 115.” Challenging me to fight as officer G. Sellano stood listening and watching while supervising the A.M. medication line next to my assigned cell.

Said inmate porter worker then began yelling to the tower officer to open my cell door in order to attack me while officer G. Sellano continued to fail to intervene, act, or quell the growing disorder.

The inmate porter worker in question is allowed to volunteer work for officer G. Sellano where the inmate receives detailed information on pending grievances filed against officer G. Sellano – then uses that personal knowledge of grievance information to confront, intimidate, and provoke some violent incident with the grievant: all while officers on the unit watch.

Facility Captain Lewis has turned a blind eye to not only this particular inmate porter worker’s ongoing propensity for violence and daily disruptions on the housing unit, but also the fact that this particular inmate porter worker is and has been for months now, used as a torpedo for housing officers like G. Sellano to be programmed to target prisoners like me who use the grievance process here at RJD while Warden James Hill has been unable to prevent officers like G. Sellano from using working knowledge of department operations to gather information for the purposes of endangering the safety and the welfare of those confined therein.

Inmates vs Prisoners

Inmates are the categorical definition used by the U.$. law to white wash their crimes. It is no different politically than to call the torture of Iraqi POWs “enhanced interrogation.” Inmate also implies a more collaborative relationship between captive and captor, which is an appropriate term to use for the inmate porter described above. A politically appropriate term for the vast majority of the imprisoned lumpen in this country would be prisoners or captives. We do not live in a time where wars are officially declared or sanctioned by governments through formalized documents. Wars are declared through invasions (such as the Russian invasion of Ukraine), bombings (such as Al-Qaeda’s destruction of the twin towers), etc. The U$A has waged war against the oppressed nations inside their borders through mass imprisonment and police occupation – thinly disguised as “war on crime” or “war on drugs.” During this mass imprisonment and lumpenization of the oppressed nation masses through the criminal inju$tice system, inmates are those who collaborate with the pigs behind bars – a consciousness of a lumpen class in itself. A lumpen class for itself, as Marx used the term, would recognize the political importance of the two distinctions.

As stated earlier, the stop snitching slogan can be utilized as principled solidarity as fellow oppressed nationals within the constant anti-people activities of the lumpen class. Through popular support, such as hip-hop culture, this stop snitching principle would even extend beyond street life into the youth where telling on adults or school teachers would even be considered snitching. The principle of a specific lumpen life now become a general platitude and empty virtue. We ask our imprisoned lumpen readers, can snitching really be stopped without independent power from the oppressor? What would it mean to be loyal to “your people” or “your folks”? Can the principle of anti-snitching be applied to the enemy who it is designed to protect fellow oppressed nations or lumpen from in the first place?

We hope to move the discussion a step forward for our readers who seek to transform the anti-people gangster mentality to the pro-people revolutionary path. Using the few rights that the oppressed are given against the oppressor to build power among the masses is not snitching. Perhaps this over-emphasis on snitching on fellow criminals (as the government are criminals oftentimes in lawless corners of society such as prisons) shows the class in itself level consciousness that many of our readers might be susceptible to.

Stop Snitching!

Stop Collaborating!

“(We) MIM Should not excuse behaviors that could have been avoided with asexuality. It must weigh the costs of being non-sexual.” - MIM Theory 2/3

Transforming the criminal mentality into a revolutionary one means also fully confronting bourgeois culture, morality and its justification for the existing society, i.e. bourgeois rule. This bourgeois mentality also includes things that aren’t necessarily “criminal” but definitely constitute crimes against others and from a proletarian perspective and for our aims is at the very least counter-productive if not counter revolutionary. Sadly, as Wiawimawo stated, due to us being products of this decadent society we all enter the Revolution with some amount of sickness. Some suffer from drug addictions, some selfishness and extreme individualism, others idealism, patriarchy or even out right misogyny, e.g. “Fuck a Bitch” or other forms of sexism. Most “criminal” lumpen glorify gangsterism and are quite infatuated with gang culture even when pretending to be about unifying the block…. But regardless, we all enter the revolutionary process with ways of the “old society” especially since it hasn’t gone anywhere.

The above quote is from a Comrade who ultimately died due to a lifetime battle with drugs. Yet this is a quite Revolutionary and apt quote and this comrade’s life is also apt for this discussion as it shows no matter how advanced we become and even how authentic our walk, we will always be confronted not only with the broader bourgeois society and its fucked up music, culture, morals, world out-look etc etc ad nauseam. We still are likely to have to confront and check our own bourgeois demons. But the above quote could be applicable to revolutionary Walkin’ in general if any of our behaviors could be avoided simply by avoiding self-indulgence if our goal is truly revolution then we should practice abstinence in that regard whenever possible.

I personally have never came to jail sober and have done all manner of anti-social behavior “under the influence” since I’ve been in prison I’ve yet to get drunk. For me this was so stark it was no choice at all. Additionally other counter-productive behaviors were also not so difficult for me to conquer or at least consciously struggle against. Yet for all my talk I was quite chauvinistic and I’d say misogynistic in actual practice and this is something I’ve struggled with since I was in elementary.

There was a time when I rationalized my misogynistic behavior – I’ve now come to believe this had a lot to do with my inability to conduct consistent communist practice – however, I’m now quite clear that this is simply lumpen and its kissing cousin petty bourgeois personification and practice and furthermore serves only to strengthen counter revolution.

I am not too hard on myself for this late transformation however – every single day in this decadent society we have to swallow, weigh, witness or consciously wrestle with all manner of bourgeois bullshit. Life may be good but this world is truly a nightmare. In these death camps, in a real concentration camp, in slave quarters, in an immigration caravan, in dark alleys and hallways thrash out this imperialist dominated world what people must go through especially when there’s no real struggle to resist and defeat this oppression (as proven by amerikkka’s nuclear bombs) even shadows get burnt… yes shadows were literally burnt into the ground.

Yet I’m now quite clear on my need to confront this as it is simply another tool the state can use to divide, dismiss or exploit real revolutionary work. This always makes me think of focoism, its attraction is “to go out on a high note”… I understand this quite well. I also think this is why lumpen and petty bourgeois youth in the semi-colonies often have a hard time with revolutionary ideas, party’s and practices as all they know is immediate release, this in addition, is why so many Rev’s succumb to self-obsession or self indulgence’s. But once I accepted this is simply lumpen/petty bourgeois bullshit behavior it was easier for me to confront it as any good homie, friend and especially “comrade” should know s/he is not only a reflection of the community, party, professed ideas etc he/r can also undermine, expose or bring harm to he/r person, community, or just their ideas which for a revolutionary communist must be unacceptable.

I speak in general terms because specific failures, flaws, addictions or internalized petty bourgeois (wanna be big bourgeois) bullshit isn’t new to the movement and once I realized how destructive (counter-revolutionary in fact) my failure to totally transform and practice my all too parroted “self discipline” – something as stated I’m quite adamant about “Walkin my walk”… Yet I gave the enemies a free tool to use against me and against us – again I do know why for some focoism is a “natural release”… working w/ ideas and for “long-term goals” especially in isolation of an active movement has been the death of many good Rads and whole collectives especially where self-discipline requires we police things that we once considered quite natural or even which is common practice for others but the state has made it taboo for us.

I read an article in The Abolitionist (Summer 2022) where a captive was released and days later his parole agent came to place an electronic monitor on his ankle which he knew would be a condition of parole, but still days later after she placed the “E.M.” on him she called and explained he will be allowed out the house 6:00am-10:00am and this should be plenty of time “For you to handle your business”. I couldn’t help but think how after 10:00 it would be unlawful to walk to the corner store or park, to go to school, work, to date, build community ties etc etc and how his actions will be a reflection of larger class forces and struggles where if he failed it would set back the opportunity for someone else to be released on “E.M.” supervision and to succeed he would need all the self-discipline in the world not to look out the window at 11 see a friend or interesting person come outside to talk and walk with them to the corner…I imagine all the lawful things a Jew in Nazi Germany or slave in amerikkka was forbidden.

Amerikkka exploits and sanctions the world so its unlawful to aid Cuba, to encourage oppressed people to keep their resources for themselves, to disrupt military supply chains or even expose what the government is doing to the public. On 22 August 2022, KPFA Radio’s “Letters and Politics” had a canadian Marxist scholar on who the host asked “isn’t it an advancement that we have a better life thanks to capitalism?” (this was the gist) The Marxist scholar replied “Yes”(even under the new mode of production we don’t want to lose those “freedoms”) and conceded this as advancement. Yet I contend both the host and this Rad suffered from self-deception. I think Huey’s “intercommunal” line was bullshit – to say nations don’t exist – but capitalism has infact now transferred and transposed the class struggle from core countries to exploited countries largely on the global south so whole countries live the bourgeois life to one degree or another, and the proletariat is now largely confined to their own powerless “nations.”

So for so many others they make do with left over bourgeois scraps. I saw a documentary a while back about how the U.$. was sending its plastic and metal scraps to the Third World as part of its neo-liberal deals with them – just as now Biden can promise less greenhouse gas from U.$ corporations “in amerikkka” but will never say they can’t offset this by reckless disregard for the oppressed nations. Part of the question to the canadian Marxist was also a statement that slavery is no more “thanks to capitalism” to which the Marxist agreed, hence his statement we don’t want to lose those “freedoms” but slavery very much exists outside of the “shiny city on the hill”, outside the gate they root through U.$ trash like pigs looking for mushrooms, women still are very much oppressed and yes slavery, I repeat, still exists. Yet they’re always judged by the standards of the exploiters and defenders of the city gates who gladly lower the drawbridge for the returning army with its war booty.

I stopped drinking because I get drunk and have no inhibitions, no fear and no rationalizations. Likewise I wrestled with self-indulgences “because they were denied” and I too have absolutely no respect for the enemy. Even when drunk I’ve never intentionally hurt anyone I loved, never fought my friends, never stole from loved ones etc, but not so for a perceived enemy, or if I felt I deserved something, or revenge was called for. All this was obviously before I became a revcom. But I know where it all came from and what it represents, its lumpen/petty bourgeois sentiments struggling with social, dictates that “I’m nothing,”“We’re nothing,”“You can’t have,” “You don’t deserve,” etc etc. But I know, because I couldn’t control it, I’d have to leave it alone. So now I’ve arrived rather late, at a similar conclusion of another thing I must deny myself due to how it can never be a resolvable contradiction (for me). I think it was jesus who said (according to grandma’s bible) that if your right eye causes you to sin cast it out. If a revolutionary could paint the mystical soul it would be a macabre creature… stitched and resewn on wings, scars, busted knuckles etc etc.

I am quite clear on a few things and the utter failure of capitalism-imperialism and its rule is one of those things that I have much clarity on. Will I slip up? will it be as easy as alcohol for me? will the enemy be able to conspire against me? will there ever be any normalcy in my life? will it always be ad hoc salvaging? will revcoms ever beat back lumpen/petty bourgeois culture and ideas to be the undisputed voice for the semi-colonies? I may never know these things we may not like all the answers to those things, but I’m quite sure there’s millions of people who like me will never forgive this system for what not only it’s done to the world or ourselves but the choices and contradictions we’ve been forced to wrestle with due to its rule and its utter disregard for our humanity will never be forgiven and whose dogged focus is to bring about a Revolutionary Communist World.

Amerikkkan media feels compelled to state each and every time election talk is brought up that it’s the “Big lie” to claim it was stolen and to be unequivocal about Putin and Russia’s invasion as to the cause of the war in Ukraine and to be clear on the need to support Ukraine’s effort to win the war, it makes sure it always says it was a coup attempt on Jan 6 and that Amerikkka is a democracy. All this because truth is important. One of my favorites is Ben Fletcher who is a petty bourgeois radical who says it’s right to defend Ukraine simply because its unlawful. I wish I could search his writings talks etc but I’d wager dollars to donuts he has never said arms should be shipped to Palestine to defend against or push out Israeli troops, not even New Afrikans should arm themselves to fight back when pigs kill us nor although he says he said it was wrong to invade Iraq etc I’d bet he never said Iraqi’s should be aided to kill U.$. troops or he or any “leftist” in KKKville should support the counter-insurgency I’d bet had he and his ilk done so it would’ve had an effect on secular forces so now only Islamists are given a voice and many even long for the klan to return.

The labor aristocracy and other layers of the bourgeois here are quite in lock step. The only questions are which bourgeois party will win elections or steal them. We are looking at fascist forces, wars, possible world wars, environmental devastation, national oppression and we daily witness the consequences of what having a shining city on a hill entails and what it forces on others to do to survive not being a part of the in crowd, but this is no one’s concern and misleaders like the media or “Labor Leader” Ben Fletcher can only parrot Democratic or anti-Republican talkin’ points and even so called communists or at least “Marxists” can not see beyond bourgeois horizons.

For these reasons we must shore-up our ranks and connect with the broader proletariat movement. As its quite clear we will be in the wilderness for sometime, only practice and work will forge us ahead and conquer our bourgeois and lumpen demons. We can not be idle, not in prison, not school houses, not under capitalism-imperialism. They’re not idle. Steel sharpens steel. Proletariat morals and practice forever taken to a new level. These last paragraphs are not a mis-step; I contend we defeat our demons when we keep bourgeois morality clearly juxtaposed to proletariat morality and ideology. They currently are running laps around us here in amerikkka. Most people can conceive of “the end of the world” but can’t conceive of a New World with new social relations and a new mode of production that they themselves must work for and this is our failure to own.

Yet in this answer we can show a new type of Revcom responsive to the extensive body of work of real Maoism and revolutionary practice. Unbroken macabre spirits on display and in motion will never win over someone like Ben Fletcher the Mis-leader, nor bourgeois media but we can clearly show the dividing line between bourgeois (lumpen included) and revolutionary-proletariat-feminist-nationalists. This could be quite a powerful thing, and because there’s larger forces at work, if nothing else, self-discipline and revolutionary “consistent” practice at the very least may deny the enemy another victory.

The task of a revolutionary, regardless of ones political/ideological or cultural leanings, is to make revolution. Revolution is all about change. The biggest change that a revolutionary must undertake is the equivalent to in the religion of Islam what is called Jihad. Jihad is not limited to what most Western religious enthusiasts have been led to believe, the meaning of Jihad goes much deeper than the concept of crusades or mere bombings. The biggest Jihad or battle that one can have is the battle for control over oneself.(als see MIM(Prisons)’s study pack on religion) To the revolutionary, this task is important because he/she has to become the change they wish to produce to the world.

A constant improving of one’s character with the righteousness of ideals that have went through the rigors of tests to be found or rather proved to be correct for the overall ordeal of advancement. Once again before this can be felt by the untapped but potential revolutionary or the dumb, deaf & blind brother/sister clinging to a culture intended to kill them, the revolutionary must make this change (revolution) within his/her own personal character. This is what should be used to provide an example for others of whom we are trying to reach. This also however leads us to the conclusion that people no matter the fact that we come from common ways of living & thinking, are still each different.

This statement doesn’t mean that I subscribe to individualism, because true revolutionaries think from the communal mindset. However, since we are far removed from that concept, we must find ways that are productive to lead one to the communal mindset that already exists in us naturally. The idea of individualism is one of the main obstacles to overall community change, because we’re not acting as organisms moving together for the betterment of the body (society). But that doesn’t mean that all aspects of individualism are wrong, for example, “each according to ability.” So while some may think of us all developing the mind of the commune will lead us all to thinking like the Borg from Star Trek (everyone thinking the same thing), I see it more like the Smurfs. Yes the Smurfs. They had a unified community, accompanied with everyone playing a specific role. This way shouldn’t just be relegated to one’s own political vanguard or the military brigade. We have to find some means of communicating these ideals to everyone. Since we all share a common enemy, all of our efforts have to revolve around crushing that threat.

If we relegate ourselves to constantly battling over which of the communal methods hold the stronger validity, we’ll all end up moving in our own directions & probably never initializing the changes that we are the basis of our citizenship within these groups. We’ll more than likely continue to develop the mentalities they would like for us to develop, which will ultimately reduce us to caricature. All opinions are not equal & there is such a thing as counter-productive revisionism. Our vanguard elements are going to have to develop the use of Democratic Centralism. This process however must be done without the bitterness & rancor that can only come from egoism. In fact egoism must be crushed, because great man personalities have no place in revolution. Revolution, whether politically or through armed struggle, is all about the altering of a society that is crushing the life force out of all of us, this is not an individual problem, once again it is communal!

Dialectical materialism is all about examining things within their total sequence & seeing the pros & cons in the struggles of the past. The obvious reason is to better equip ourselves from suffering the same fate as a result of the same failures of our previous brave brothers/sisters engaged at trying to crush the outside enemy culture & to utilize whatever methods may be useful to strengthen what we already have. A constant improvisation still needs to be done, but this doesn’t mean that we should stop studying people’s war. We have to study the principles of people’s war & learn to interpret them to fit our overall situation here. Most wars of liberation took place in the countryside of their respective lands. Our situation is different in that Amerikan settler-colonialism is modernized & at least 80-90% of Amerika is industrialized, so the nerve centers of this nation are indeed the cities. This means that hip shooting cops are all around us, thus making them easier to reach.

In the opening phases of our struggle for liberation, I feel just as Comrade Jackson felt, that the military proper must be kept hidden & separate from the political front. You see the role of a political revolutionary is totally different than the military who are engaged in armed struggle against macabre freaks. The guerrilla chief is tasked with communicating to his soldiers that they must protect their political peoples at their work. If we let our “voices” die to machine gun fire, no knock invasions, the anonymous tip, political incarceration & even the work of agent provocateurs & class defectors, then our dream of eventual freedom will more than likely die with those brave brothers/sisters. The guerrilla chief however must also have a thorough understanding of the true nature of fascism, the modern industrial state, the economic landscape etc. The reason is that if one group dies or is not as effective the guerrilla chief & his band of revolutionaries can still keep the revolution alive.

As of now our main problem is the fact that our vanguard & military groups have shifted their focus from revolution to clinging to the culture of anti-people crimes. The settler-colonial strategy is law & order which ultimately means prison – our tactic is perfect disorder which leads to the proletariat & the lumpen creating mass disorder to work against the beast (cops) & their vigilante supporters. In 1969, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover declared that “there will no longer be a Black Panther Party in the U.S.” The Black Panther Party was not the only revolutionary group & in spite of popular belief, they were not just a group working exclusively in the interest of Blacks. The Black Panther Party like almost every other revolutionary group, was a communist organization that utilized the principles they learned from successful communist victories, from examples such as Mao Zedong and his Red Book. They formed alliances with many other revolutionary groups and because the Black situation stood out more (& still does) they were thought to be the overall vanguard party to even other political & military vanguards. So the goal wasn’t to just fix conditions in the Black community. That was their primary objective, but they understood that if you just focused exclusively on the black conditions and fixing only our areas, we would have to ghettoize other segments of society that would equal Mexicans, Chican@s, First Nations, etc.

To stop the progressive elements of unity among different cultural/revolutionary groups, the establishment caused the leaders of these groups to distrust their own members. This was done by the government from planting spies in these groups, along with wiretaps, surveillance, to out sending letters to leaders that were supposed to have come other leaders declaring war between the groups. The goals the establishment used largely worked and eventually several key leaders either went into hiding, left the country, or were even assassinated while the political prisoners suffered death legally and quasi-legally.

Of course progressive thinking was still held as an ideal in some people’s minds and this led to groups that eventually turned against the community even further by becoming gangs. Community Revolution in Progress became the goal for Raymond Washington and Stanley “Tookie” Williams or Brotherly Love Overriding Oppression & Destruction became the acronym for Blood. These were good ideas and could’ve worked if we had received the freedom first. The freedom I’m referring to must come first in the form of a free-dome because our situation was more psychological than physical. This means that our minds were created for the sole purpose of getting us to act against our even better interests. This shouldn’t be understated since the mindsets that we have now didn’t exist in communal Africa. These mindsets is what led us to industrializing this country which ultimately our labor was used as the down payment on the system of economics that determines one’s status in this country.

Without the mindsets that we adopted (through long usage) we would’ve long been better equipped at resisting. But since chattel slavery lasted for 400 years and we haven’t been free 200 years, how can we hope to win freedom, especially since once again we are still clinging to the ideas that created our mindsets in the first place? Since it is our design that gave beauty to the world, which should be easy to see since others are quick to pick up on our culture, even sometimes more readily than we are, we must go back to our own design. This could work for the betterment of not only us as a group however, this could be used as a basis to show others righteous examples that could ultimately lead to a change. But it must begin now. For us to delay what must be done today is like asking someone else to undertake to aid us in a liberation effort that must be engaged in by our own efforts.

Another problem working against us is our inability to understand the difference between reform and change. Largely the only righteous peoples who were working for us are the people who were attacked by the outside enemy culture. Anyone else was used because their stance wasn’t revolutionary. I’m not dismissing people like Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks etc, but I know that the main reason why they are mentioned over people such as Malcolm X or Huey Newton is their view against the necessity not only of violence and the correct usage of armed struggle, but it also mainly rests with them telling us to escape from the culture that we embrace. Malcolm X’s image is only now used because at the end of his life he was said to have accepted whites. Part of that was true, but he never said they weren’t devils just because he converted to orthodox Islam. What he said was that in his view the devil (white man) could only be redeemed in his opinion through Islam because Christianity has not redeemed them from not only killing us, but also starting wars with other whites.

So people like Martin, through his practice of pacifism and his refusal to go against the culture of Amerikanism, resulted in him winning a few reforms which are only offered to us as tokens, these tokens however are not change. Change is why we are no longer looked at as second class citizens in a world where some are held above others based on racial & economic reasons. His Imperial Majesty who heavily inspired Bob Marley to later embrace Rastafarianism, said that “until the philosophy that the color of one’s skin is as less significant as the color of one’s eyes there will always be war.” The road to freedom means freedom, justice & equality for all regardless of one’s ethnicity, political views, religions, spirituality etc.

We will have this freedom even at the cost of total war. We come to the conclusion that violence to us may be the only recourse. This violence shouldn’t be tied to romanticism, it’s about us altering the conditions that are restricting our passage to freedom. I humbly and passionately respect all the sincere people who gave their life and ideas to produce men like me whose goal is to move further than when they left off and that’s even for those of whom I disagree with. I recognize that passion leads to different outcomes and different results, as long as they were intended to benefit us as a whole than whether I disagree or not I still have the fact that their life force was used to alter the conditions that is for the betterment of our lives as a whole. My stance as a whole is rooted around us globally enjoying freedom, justice & equality. I realize the imperial process is only complete if the parent imperial nation - USA - is strong so I’m all for bringing Amerika down to her knees. Anyone who sincerely has that as a goal I embrace, white or Black I embrace, but it must begin now.

Long Live Guerrilla Chief George Jackson!

Long Live All those Who Don’t Fear Freedom!

Plastick of MIM(Prisons) responds:This comrade here has given us a core learning element of leading the masses by example – a new socialist world and a new human being will have to constantly remove the old world’s reactionary culture and habits.

One thing this comrade has mentioned that we are in disagreement is in regards to fascism. Originally, the comrade has spoke of fascist Amerika which has been changed to settler-colonial Amerika by this responder. We define fascism as a new strategy by the bourgeois dictatorship when it can no longer rule the way it has ruled before. We believe that Amerika is likely to turn fascist through a political-economic crisis which is integral to capitalism-imperialism. However, we believe that the current state of methods such as police killings, imprisonment, and exploiting the majority of the world for superprofits and high level of consumption has always been the way that Amerika has ruled. When this social-democratic strategy of sharing the piece of the imperialist pie to the oppressor nation (Amerikans) ceases to work due to an ever deepening of the crisis, then fascism will indeed come. Up until now, Amerika has maintained relative strength, and Sun Tzu taught us to attack when the enemy is helpless.

Long Live George Jackson!

Long Live All those Who Don’t Fear Freedom!

Plastick

A comrade responded to the article “Oh So You Woke” in ULK 73:

“In this article the author criticizes the likes of Angela Davis and John Lewis. neither Ms. Davis nor Mr. Lewis were agents of propaganda for the bourgeois as the author implies, but rather they were committed to the struggle and spent many years on the front lines. As far as penetrating the police and other arms of state imperialism/control, someone is going to fill those roles. Is it better us or them? WE must attack the status quo from multiple fronts – from the inside as well as the outside. WE need more Angela Davises and John Lewises.”

I do agree with the comrade that WE do need to attack the status quo from multiple fronts but when one of our own lumpen falls into the lines of reformism and revisionism while on the road of revolution or liberation, instead of being a die hard non-compromising, non-settling, give-me-death-if-I-can’t-have-real-life-liberation revolutionary like Fred Hampton, Bunchy Carter and the many fore Fathers and fore Mothers of our lumpen communities, who died and were imprisoned so that the eternal fire of Freedom, Justice and Equality will never lose its light and intensity in the surviving generations and their children. So they can fight on until that day comes in entirety. Then one has to ask the question … who do you work for?

If WE as a First World lumpen and Third World proletarian revolutionaries have more individuals like Angela Davis & John Lewis, We’ll never fulfill the S.O.P.’s of the UFPP. We’ll be in a state of Reformism and Revisionism, being closely intertwined with imperialism/capitalism instead of overthrowing it.

First and foremost Angela Davis is a major reformist, she was a part of the Communist Party, U$A, where the CPU$A was about that Real Life revolution before the 1940’s but by the 1960’s all their members that took inspiration from Mao Zedong had left the party. After the attempt of Jonathan Jackson of freeing his older brother George Jackson, Fleeta Drumgo and John Clutchette (Soledad Brothers) at Marin County Courthouse in San Rafael, CA, was then Angela Davis charged with aiding the attempted escape and placed on the FBI’s most wanted list due to her close correspondence with George Jackson. She was found not guilty after her case was severed from the other defendants like Ruchell “Cinque” Magee who is still locked up in these Koncentration Kamps, while the rally call of the masses at the time was “Free Angela Davis and ALL POLITICAL PRISONERS!” Then in 1973 she founded the CP front the National Alliance Against Racism and Political Repression that REFUSED to come defend Black Liberation Army members facing prison time.

Later on in her “revolutionary” life she got back into academia while still being a huge influence for the CPU$A, where she ran twice for Vice President of the U$A. She supported Democratic presidential candidates, like Joe Biden, to pressure them when in office to the CPU$A’s Khrushchevite peaceful transition into socialism agenda or the Pac-Man politics (biting away at imperialism until it collapses on itself). She also co-founded the Committees of Correspondence with a moniker that points to the CPU$A’s notion that “Communism is 20th Century Americanism.” In her writings and university lectures in the academic realm, she promoted the CPU$A’s reformism and postmodern politics, the basis of this day and age concept of “Abolition,” and not the dire need of armed revolution.

John Lewis is basically the same in the sense with the Pac-Man politics, Abolition reformist movement and post-modernism. Also one of the leaders of the Civil Rights Movement and a leader in the peaceful nonviolent strategy of protest and civil unrest. The “Woke” U.$. leftists, who are the petty-bourgeoisie, praises Angela Davis and John Lewis as saints and the imperialist aided in placing them on those pedestals to be praised by the masses, because they knew with the ideologies and concepts that these two individuals promote will do no real harm to their oppressive establishment. Point proven in the last summer series of protest after the murder of George Floyd and many others.

What real change came from that civil unrest in a real revolutionary way? It’s because of Angela Davis and John Lewis that We have to re-educate and un-brainwash the masses from the concepts and ideologies of Reformism, Revisionism, Postmodernism and the Pac-Man politics with the concepts and ideologies of Marxism, Leninism and Maoism to gain liberation from imperialism through armed resistance and revolution. Reason why it was stated that they are agents of the imperialist propaganda in the article “Oh, So You Woke.” Whether it was intentional or not they step out of the realm of being First World lumpen to the realm of the petty-bourgeoisie and benefited from the transition also. It pays to be famous and in the limelight of the pop culture revolutionary contest, right? Even after being on the front lines where they witness first hand so many of our souljas and leaders lose their lives, placed in exile and/or imprisoned, they settled for positions of comfort for self and appeared to be in the struggle still, instead of being ten toes down in the mud with WE overthrowing imperialism/capitalism to establish socialism, and later communism, nation- and world-wide.

DON’T FALL FOR THE POP CULTURE REVOLUTIONARY HYPE COMRADES.

This will be the official statement of the North Carolina United Front for Peace in Prisons. We will contribute to accomplishing these goals:

• Peace. We must first find peace within, then help those around us to understand the tactics of divide and conquer; the true reason they’re in the system and how and why making peace within thy-self and with those around us is what real men/wimmin & L.O.’s represent.
• Unity. Unite to achieve common interests; justice & peace and safeguarding our communities. Brothers of the faithful will continue efforts to restore peace among NC L.O.’s. All within the USW may join our branch of the UFPP.
• Growth. Study MIM Assignment 1 on dialectical materialism & MIM structure & organization study pack. Then continue to study in whatever fields are appealing. To be successful we must learn to organize and (in certain matters) learn from the past (dialectical materialism). We spread our message and ULK to interested convicts and outside supporters. Books will be cyphered among comrades.
• Internationalism. We will support the liberation programs of the oppressed nations internationally.
• Independence. We plan to use a clothing company to promote political art. Some of us will also learn to become independent from government, which allows you to also make citizens arrest. Further abolishment.